Survival Arts

Which is why you'll be a competent, passionate professional and they'll wonder what the hell to do with their lives in 10 year's time.

I noticed some things about my math classes over the years, too: that they were largely useless, given the rote-memorization technique and the fallibility of the average non-eidetic human brain's long term memory storage of stringently-memorized data.

When you're on your death-bed, will you look back on this rant and wonder whether you should have bothered expending so much energy spying on and judging others for their abilities in a class which, in all likelihood, less than 1% of your graduating class will ever use, or be able to use, for most of the rest of their lives? Probably not, as this incident will be far too unimportant to retain in memory by then.

So what's the point?

Is it that you want to convince the fakers to change their ways? To what end? Why should you care whether they're learning the way you are, or even learning at all? Are you personally involved with these people? If so, why not confront them with this information rather than posting it where your classmates will likely never encounter it, in a godforsaken blog in the deepest reaches of cyberspace? If you have no personal connection, how is their second-handing it through their life relevant to how you live yours?

William of Ockham would suggest that the simplest explanation - that you're a gloating blowhard - is the most likely to be true. I'm not sure about that. I will take my own advice, though, and stop concerning myself with the foolish actions of others. Ciao.

Russell, my mother said the same thing in her own way. She, being another one of those "competent in everything she does" people.

While, as Timmy notes above, she never used calculus, she also never used the slide-rules that were all anyone had back when she was in school. She did it as you suggest, with pencil and paper, and an understanding of where to begin breaking problems down.

"Word" problems do seem to effect people as "terrible, awful", while doing nothing other than tying together language of words with language of numbers. Could it be that this is done far too little? That more interconnections betwixt these seemingly disparate languages would be a good way to improve thought processes? Could be why it's not taught in forced government school.

I don't find Timmy a surprise at all, someone who makes a large effort to say how he's not going to waste his time doing exactly what he's doing. Chortle. Don't erase it, a bad example is important.

Curt-

Reminds me of a rant about Brazillian physics students in Richard Feynman's book Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman. They were excellent at answering questions whose answers they had memorized, but worthless for any practical problem. There's an excerpt at http://www.exmormon.org/boards/honestboard/messages/783.html

The last thing I remember doing with calculus: I needed to adapt Least Squares polynomial approximation for complex values, and to do that I essentially had to derive the method almost from scratch. (It was for a "conlang"-related project.)

Before that, let's see, I worked out where the dominant artifact spirals change in the "sunflower" pattern (plane and spherical - see the webpage).

Before that, hm, possibly something to do with Iterated Prisoners Dilemma game strategies. Dunno. Certainly nothing very practical in a long time, but I've had great fun with it.

I understand that some people are very passionate about mathematics and believe in the strongest worth ethic, while shunning calculators for anything unless required. I think this is admirable, and I respect these individuals.

However, when I consider actually using these skills in business, I tend to believe that high proficiency with a calculator could create a greater efficiency and solve problems more rapidly. I know that professors can take their time and work everything out by hand, but when your boss wants an answer 'right now', I dont think he will be biased towards its source!

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